The present invention relates to a flat package integrated circuit (IC) chip storing apparatus which is suitable for storing a plurality of flat package IC chips.
A tray having many compartments as shown in FIG. 2 is generally used as a means for storing a plurality of flat package IC chips as shown in FIGS. 1A through 1C. Furthermore, a carrier for protecting leads of the flat package IC chip is also used. Such carriers are stored in a prism-shaped plastic case, a so-called "stick", as shown in FIG. 4.
However, these storing means have the following defects:
(i) Only a small number of chips can be stored. In other words, the number of chips which can be supplied is small. For this reason, when a reception test of chips or chip mounting to a printed circuit board is automatically performed, it takes considerable time to replace trays or sticks. When a machine for automatic replacing trays or sticks is adopted, this machine becomes complex in structure.
(ii) Furthermore, since chip alignment required for automatically mounting the chips becomes complex in procedure, a machine for automatically mounting IC chips becomes expensive. In a stick method, each of the carriers stored in the stick has aligning sections 11 (FIG. 3) and stoppers 12 comprising leaf springs to securely hold an IC chip. Therefore, the chip alignment becomes relatively easy in comparison to a tray method. However, since a carrier position in the stick and the relationship between respective carriers are unstable, sufficient alignment cannot be performed.
(iii) Since the shape of the tray or the stick varies with every manufacturer and for every type thereof, it is therefore difficult to design an automatic machine.